President's Message - March 2013

Website archive 1995-2013

This
last month has passed without much to excite the observers and imagers among us,
although occasionally, in the midst of weeks and weeks of cloudy nights, a clear
night will slip through, more likely than not accompanied by a large, bright,
moon. In my logbook, so far this year, I have recorded one night of observing.

Thankfully, other activities which are not so weather-dependent continue. For
example, thanks to the excellent efforts of Lauri Roche, and the National RASC
Public Speaker Program, we are a joint sponsor of the principal speaker at the
upcoming symposium
Exploring the
formation and evolution of planetary systems of the International
Astronomical Union, being held this Spring in Victoria. Thanks to Mark Bohlman
and Dorothy Paul, and other members of the Light Pollution Abatement Committee,
for their fine work on the establishment of Cattle Point as an urban dark sky
preserve. Extra kudos to Mark for his first-class interview about the preserve
on CBC, and to Chris Gainor for his excellent interview on C-FAX explaining how
space rocks come to land in Russia.

Lastly, we took note of another honour presented to Dr. Jim Hesser, the 2013
CASCA (Canadian Astronomical Society) Qilak Award for "astronomy outreach and
communication." We are lucky to have Jim in
our midst.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is dedicated
to the promotion of astronomy and its related sciences; we espouse the
scientific method, and support dissemination of discoveries and
theories based on that well-tested method.